Let the Countdown Begin:Rangers and Blueshirt Bulletin set to kickoff 2009 - 10 season

NYR Bench

It's going to be a fun 24 or so hours both for the Rangers and the group here at Blueshirt Bulletin.

Head Coach John Tortorella will be tinkering with his final line combinations in preparation for tomorrow night's season opener at the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins as we tinker with the final touches for our beta release of the new website.

On the Rangers news, Sean Avery appears to be a no-go, at least for Game 1, as he continues to rehab his knee. The newly signed Alexei Semenov, as Twittered yesterday, will most likely be the oddman out for tomorrow night as Mike DelZotto was probably not retained to sit as the seventh defenseman.

Some speculative line combinations for night one to quibble over before any more updates trickle in:

Higgins - Dubinsky - Gaborik

Prospal - Drury - Kotalik

Lisin - Anisimov - Callahan

Brashear - Boyle - Voros

Staal - Girardi

Redden - Rozsival

Gilroy - Del Zotto

Not sure if the defense stays like that. I would be more inclined to think that Rozsival and Redden are separated.

On another note, in anticipation of our new website launch, there may be some downtime here at BB.com and BBPlus.com. Please bear with us as we make this major transition. Stay tuned on Twitter for the latest updates.

As our first version of the site will be Beta, some of the features will not be completely functional until the end of October. However, the general layout and design will be complete.

There will also be our first ever podcast with our season review available on Saturday.

Our first print issue of the 2009 - 10 season is in the books and will be available to subscribers by the second week or so of October.